Modest Mussorgsky

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881), Russian composer, considered one of the most original and influential of the 19th-century Russian nationalist composers.

Born in Karevo, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was educated privately and at a military academy in Saint Petersburg. When he was 18 years old he met Russian nationalist composer Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky, through whom Mussorgsky joined the circle of Russian nationalist composers now known as The Five. In 1858 he resigned from military service to devote himself to music; after 1863 he supported himself as a government clerk.

Except for some instruction in musical form with Mily Balakirev, a member of The Five, Mussorgsky was self-taught in composition. His bold, unorthodox harmonies, based on the scales of Russian folk music, influenced later non-Russian composers. His songs, among the finest of the 19th century, reflect his desire to reproduce the rhythms and contours of Russian speech. So also does his masterpiece, the opera Boris Godunov, based on a drama by Russian author Aleksandr Pushkin. Completed in 1868 and first produced (after considerable changes) in 1874, it is a monumental work, unusual in its musical and dramatic use of the chorus and admired for its psychological insight and its evocation of the Russian people. In 1896 it was reorchestrated and in places reharmonized by another member of The Five, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and is best known in this version. Mussorgsky's other works include the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition (1874, orchestrated in 1922 by French composer Maurice Ravel); the symphonic poem Saint John's Night on the Bare Mountain (1867; also known as Night on Bald Mountain); the song cycles The Nursery (1872) and Songs and Dances of Death (1877); and the unfinished operas Khovanshchina, completed by Rimsky-Korsakov, and The Fair at Sorochinsk, completed by César Cui, another member of The Five.